Upstate/Downstate: Students train in computational biology, medicine in TIRP collaboration

This is the second story in a fall series about collaborations between Cornell's Ithaca and Weill Cornell Medical College campuses.

First-year doctoral students enrolled in the Tri-Institutional Research Program's new training program in computational biology and medicine, shown in Upson Hall, are, from left, Amrita Basu, Sung Wook Chi, Yonatan Ben-Simhon, Shobhit Varshney, Anat Maoz and Helgi Ingolfsson. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

By Bill Steele

A new shared graduate student training program in computational biology and medicine (CBM) has been launched by the Tri-Institutional Research Program (TIRP) collaboration between Cornell and its Weill Cornell Medical College, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Rockefeller University.

Six students enrolled in the new program began their studies last summer studying biology and medicine at the tri-institutional facilities in New York City. This fall they've moved to Cornell's Ithaca campus, taking basic graduate courses in computer science and computational biology. Next summer they will return to New York. The following year, some will return to Ithaca to concentrate their studies in computation, while others will stay in New York City to focus on the life sciences. After that they will be expected to embark on research projects leading to a Ph.D. degree.

The new discipline of computational biology includes the use of computers to analyze the vast amounts of data biologists are gathering about the genetic code and the structure of proteins and other biological molecules, as well as computer simulation of biological processes ranging from protein interactions to modeling of signaling networks in cells.

"The graduate training program will include broader aspects of computational biology," said Ron Elber, Cornell professor of computer science, who oversees the Ithaca aspects the program. The first group of students has a wide range of interests that include computer modeling of the heart, neuroscience and medical imaging, he said. Students will be able to draw on the supercomputing resources of the Cornell Theory Center.

Dr. Harel Weinstein, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor and chair of Physiology and Biophysics at Weill Cornell, and director of Weill Cornell's Institute for Computational Biomedicine (ICB), oversees the program in New York City.

"Work in the ICB aims to realize the full potential of quantitative biology, mathematics, physics and computation to enhance the study of medicine," Weinstein said. "Aiming beyond the horizon of current approaches in computational biology, the ICB will seek mathematical representations of mechanisms in the human body, ranging from the processing of genetic information to communication between cells in the brain, and from the transmission of nerve signals throughout the body to the pacing of the heart."

All these processes, Weinstein explained, involve interactions between biological molecules that can be described mathematically based on the physical laws that govern the behavior of the atoms that make up the molecules. "These mathematical representations will lend themselves to simulations in supercomputers, so that the processes can be understood in detail in order to enable new forms of disease prevention and treatment," he said.

The CBM program is the second graduate training program to emerge under the tri-institutional collaboration, following a program in chemistry and chemical biology. Programs in cancer biology and nanobiotechnology are in development.

Founded in 2000 with a $160 million gift, TIRP musters the unique resources of the involved institutions to support biomedical and clinical research and to train the next generation of life scientists. Fellowships for students in the CBM program are funded from this investment. The three institutions share laboratory space and facilities for high-performance computing, physical analysis of molecular structure, light and electron microscopy, DNA sequencing and other tools for genetic analysis and the broad range of chemical techniques that are applied to biology. New faculty members have already been recruited as tri-institutional professors who have full faculty privileges at each of the partner institutions. The recruitment will continue over a period of five to 10 years.